Perpetual Peace
by Zeitgeist84
Summary: Spoilers for MGSV. The Man Who Sold The World made a choice, and in doing so, sealed the fates of two men. As the legend of Big Boss spreads, his shadow sets the stage to cripple Cipher once and for all. Follows "The Man Who Sold The World" from V up to the Outer Heaven Uprising. No pairings.


METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN

CHAPTER 3:

PERPETUAL PEACE

* * *

15/05/1984  
New York City, New York  
United States of America

* * *

Prologue: The Inside World

* * *

Every morning he awoke with that pain.

Jack couldn't place it. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once; an assault on all sides from a phantom force. He didn't know how to cope with it, though he'd been living with that pain for twenty years now. There wasn't a limb for that dull ache that he could fix; it would remain a half-healed wound, like all the other ones he had taken over the years.

He shifted up in his bed, and surveyed the glowing red numbers of the alarm clock next him.

"Morning," he grunted to himself. Sliding out from underneath silk sheets, he padded to the dark drapes and cast them aside, greeted with the awe-inspiring sight of the New York skyline, cast brilliantly in the morning glow. Life grew wild and untamed in the concrete maze, little blocky cars some forty stories below his swanky hotel penthouse commuted to and fro, and people were merely specks. Just a million dots with a million early morning tales.

Jack wasn't impressed.

A million dots with a million souls, all unaware of the inside-world they lived in.

He sighed, and ran a hand through chestnut hair. New York didn't suit him, and he wasn't adjusting well to his newfound peace either. His hotel room was much too large and much too fancy for his liking. He had no love for plush carpeting, no need for the kingly bed in the centre of the room, no idea what to do with the spacious bath, and no interest in the television. The quiet and contemplative life, lurking in the shadows, and pulling the strings... he just wasn't that kind of man. Action was his mother, danger his teacher, and war his craft. He wasn't a man for silk sheets and fancy hotels.

But he had made the choice, in that hospital in Cyprus: revenge wasn't the answer; war was cast aside; the future, and peace, was left as the only viable option.

A future without Cipher.

A future without the hands of Zero controlling the world through information control and nuclear proliferation, and, if left unchecked, economic and governmental control as well.

And so the choice was made: build Outer Heaven, a true Outer Heaven. Not the MSF knock-off Kaz had built out in the middle of the Seychelles, but something real, and vibrant, and beautiful, not just another cog in the business of war. And, yet, Jack was to do this from the shadows, stuck within the inside-world, within Cipher's playpen. How could anything be real when he himself was living a lie?

And there, it came back. The guilt. The crushing guilt.

Had he served up one of his men, his best man, on a silver platter? Would the enemies of "Big Boss", and there were many, gun down this so-called "Venom" Snake in his stead? All to fight a proxy war with Zero, a man he didn't even know if he hated or not?

So many questions, and all Jack was left with was revulsion for himself.

No, "Venom" Snake _was_ Big Boss. His actions would prove that in time, Jack was sure; he had never seen a finer soldier in all his life. And he would be glad to give up the title to someone like that. He would make sure that Big Boss knew who he really was, and what could be.

Jack turned back to the nightstand his alarm clock was perched upon, and spotted a small, rectangular block. He stalked over to it, around the much-too-large bed, and opened the case, checking if there was a tape inside. Satisfied, he closed the recorder and hit a button at the top: "Record".

An hour later, a bearded man with an eyepatch made his way toward an unassuming bellhop on the first floor, in the lobby. Nodding briskly at him, the one-eyed man deposited something small and rectangular in his hand:

"You know who to take this to," he whispered lowly, and then, without a second glance, made his way across the lavish hall, a man of stone walking past columns of marble and over tiles of granite.

The bellhop looked at the retreating man curiously, and then smiled. Making sure no one was looking, he unclenched his fist and found himself staring at a cassette tape. His eyes were immediately drawn to the title:

 _From The Man Who Sold The World_

Alarmed, his head shot up, vainly searching for the one who gave him the tape, but the one-eyed man had turned into smoke and long since vanished into the bowels of Manhattan.

* * *

Author's Note: Just a short piece that was dying to get out since I finished TPP. It should be a relatively short fic, around 5 chapters or so, detailing Big Boss's side of the story through the Outer Heaven uprising in 1995. This fic operates under the assumption that Big Boss and Venom were always working together up to Venom's death at Outer Heaven, which seems like a ridiculously obvious assumption at first glance, but you wouldn't believe some of the outlandish theorising that goes on in some circles of the Metal Gear fandom.

Prologue: The Inside World - Complete  
Chapter One: Fox and Wolf - Next

Thanks for reading!  
Geist


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